Where did the USSR go wrong?

[Redhead]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail? Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail? How can we prevent this happening again?

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

And the tendency war begins! I want a good clean fight. Good luck :grin:

Anyway here's my opinion.

It failed because the Soviets ceased to function (as in the workers' councils). When they ceased to function, the Bolsheviks naturally evolved into a bureaucratic entity which developed different interests than the general workers because of their privileged relationship to both the means of production and political power in general. Once a bureaucracy forms, it becomes a separate entity and will inevitably devolve into state capitalism which will then give way to "regular" old international capitalism.

[Q]

It failed as soon as it started. It's birth was aborted due to civil war, isolation in a backward society and surrounded by capitalist states which subsequently brought in the fascists to make sure they didn't have a revolution. This gave rise to a counterrevolution within the revolution: Stalinism.

And yes, this is so tendency sensitive, it should have a triggerwarning...

[Five Year Plan]

It failed as soon as it started. It's birth was aborted due to civil war, isolation in a backward society and surrounded by capitalist states which subsequently brought in the fascists to make sure they didn't have a revolution. This gave rise to a counterrevolution within the revolution: Stalinism.

And yes, this is so tendency sensitive, it should have a triggerwarning...

I laughed out loud at that last part. :thumbup1: Do you think the Russian Revolution was a genuine proletarian revolution in which the bourgeois state was smashed? And if so, when was the proletarian state it established smashed?

[exeexe]

The Bolsheviks failed when they tried to achieve something which was not communism. Instead of becoming a beacon of light for the rest of workers throughout the world it became an example the capitalists were using.
"Look is this really what you want? This is the result of communism" they said

Only now - a hundred years later can we dream of delearn what the capitalist were telling us about communism

[Lensky]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail? Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail? How can we prevent this happening again?

The German Revolution.

[tuwix]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail?


On the very beginning. Lenin tried to alter Marxism and even in theory he's made it impossible to put in practice. He created a Vanguard part that had to be smarter than people but become a ruling a lite of a country. Besides there was nationalization instead of socialization, lack of democracy, censorship, secret political police, etc. Thew Bolsheviks have created a parody of socialism.



Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail?


Every country trying to go on path towards communism more or less repeated Leninist errors. Almost every country established a ruling elite in form of vanguard party who in fact owned means of production and never allowed to be owned by workers. It's impossible to build egalitarian society with elitist approach.



How can we prevent this happening again?

Sticking to the strict rules. The means of production must be owned by workers and nobody else.

[RedMaterialist]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail? Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail? How can we prevent this happening again?

The Soviet Union was a victim of its own success. Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy eliminated the entire capitalist and petit-bourgeois classes. By about 1970 the only class left was the working class. And, exactly as Marx, Engels and Lenin predicted, the state collapsed. It simply one day went out of business. Nothing like it has ever happened in history before. The first workers' revolution became the first workers' state which became the first superpower in history to ...... collapse one day.

Even if you think the bureaucracy was a "class" it too collapsed. What could be a better metaphor for the withering away of the bureaucracy than the hapless Gorbachev?

[RedMaterialist]

How can we prevent this happening again?


By remembering that the socialist revolution can ultimately succeed only by being a world revolution. Even if socialism in one state is successful for a few years it will fail because it cannot sustain itself in a world surrounded by hostile capitalism.

However, this doesn't mean we should abandon socialist revolution. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would fail, but he was still an enthusiastic supporter of it.

[RedMaterialist]

Do you think the Russian Revolution was a genuine proletarian revolution in which the bourgeois state was smashed? And if so, when was the proletarian state it established smashed?

The proletarian state was not smashed. It withered away and died. Unfortunately it was surrounded by capitalism which then took over Russia.

[consuming negativity]

The Soviet Union was a victim of its own success. Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy eliminated the entire capitalist and petit-bourgeois classes. By about 1970 the only class left was the working class. And, exactly as Marx, Engels and Lenin predicted, the state collapsed. It simply one day went out of business. Nothing like it has ever happened in history before. The first workers' revolution became the first workers' state which became the first superpower in history to ...... collapse one day.

Even if you think the bureaucracy was a "class" it too collapsed. What could be a better metaphor for the withering away of the bureaucracy than the hapless Gorbachev?

It didn't collapse at all. Especially not as communists would have predicted it. The USSR was dismantled from the top by a ruling class which stood to gain from a transition into full blown capitalism and an accompanying decline in workers rights. The referendum on the continuation of the Union that was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping it only shows how divorced from the population the bureaucracy was. Not even the most ardent Stalinists would claim that the Soviet Union collapsed into full blown communism, especially not after Khrushchev and the rest assassinated him and started de-Stalinization.

[Five Year Plan]

The proletarian state was not smashed. It withered away and died. Unfortunately it was surrounded by capitalism which then took over Russia.

I appreciate your feedback, but I was asking Q. Please carry on.

[Црвена]

State = hierarchy. There was no sign of the state "withering away," in the USSR, if anything it became more omnipresent. This is because any kind of state perpetuates class antagonisms and the state needed to be smashed immediately, not left for power-hungry psychopaths to hijack and turn into a dictatorship of themselves, rather than of the proletariat.

[Q]

I laughed out loud at that last part. :thumbup1: Do you think the Russian Revolution was a genuine proletarian revolution in which the bourgeois state was smashed? And if so, when was the proletarian state it established smashed?
Yes, the Russian revolution was obviously genuinely proletarian in nature. It was also however very limited from the outset. Besides the problems I pointed to in my previous post, there was also the limitation that the workers council model couldn't take over the running of society as an alternative state, which was the hope of the Bolsheviks to resolve the 'authority problem (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6618)'. It wasn't a solution and therefore the Bolsheviks had to step in almost immediately and merge state functions into them. This then had the toll of a political degeneration as conditions worsened and the Bolsheviks had to enforce their rule in increasingly worse ways as time went on under the conditions I pointed to in my previous post.

So, from 'revolution to counterrevolution' is a spectrum of developments, with the counterrevolutionary developments starting in early 1918 when the Bolsheviks annuled soviet elections or completely dissolved them where they couldn't get a majority (which was in many places) up to the 'Stalin constitution' of 1936 which consolidated the facts on the ground or maybe even stronger expressed in the mass executions of the old generation of Bolsheviks around the same time.

Whether or not capitalism took over from that point, as RedMaterialist contends, is another discussion. I don't think it did until the law of value could properly work again in the 1990's. In my opinion there is no need to position this as an 'either-or' (as if it could have either been socialism or been capitalism). In fact, I think this is a fallacy (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=18835).


State = hierarchy.
This kind of over-simplification isn't helpful. Is any hierarchy therefore a state? This is obvious nonsense.


This is because any kind of state perpetuates class antagonisms and the state needed to be smashed immediately, not left for power-hungry psychopaths to hijack and turn into a dictatorship of themselves, rather than of the proletariat.You're turning things on their head: The state is a result of class antagonisms. Communists do want to overthrow the capitalist state as to undermine the consolidated power of the bourgeoisie (or actually, capital in a more general sense) and replace it with a proletarian "state" which, although only a semi-state at best, is still an expression of the hegemony of the proletariat. The reason for this is simple: Class society will not end overnight, as although the 'big' bourgeoisie might disappear (which is only a very tiny group anyway) as they're expropriated, the 'petit' bourgeoisie and other middle strata (like lawyers, accountants, managers, etc) which control very specific monopolies on knowledge and skills will only be able to be absorbed into the proletariat proper on a part by part basis. The very fact therefore that the proletariat needs to ensure its continued hegemony as a class is by very definition a state-like function.

[Tim Cornelis]

The proletarian state was not smashed. It withered away and died. Unfortunately it was surrounded by capitalism which then took over Russia.

You still believe this utter nonsense? It did not wither away as there was a disempowered, dispossessed working class ruled over by another class. It did not wither away, it disintegrated quickly. This reveals an utter ignorance of 1) the events and chronology of the collapse (not withering) of the USSR and Eastern bloc 2) the nature of a workers' state and what it entails to wither away. It's wrong for so many reasons it's hard to understand why someone -- with emphasis on the 'one' since there is actually only one person who does -- chooses to believe this. Maybe that person likes the notion of having invented an alternative hypothesis for why the USSR is gone now and clings unto it for that sole reason.

[Brotto Rühle]

The Russian proletariat were dealt a shit hand by the material conditions of the time. They were never able to consolidate class rules, a dotp. Filling in the void, the Bolsheviks as a party divorced from the class, and not as "the party", took the reigns of a bourgeois state. Born of that was state capitalism.

[Црвена]

This kind of over-simplification isn't helpful. Is any hierarchy therefore a state? This is obvious nonsense.

No, but states are inherently hierarchical institutions. They are the way that the minority controls the majority, and unless the revolution gets rid of the state as well as private property, the bourgeoisie will simply be substituted for an equally oppressive ruling class under a different name.



You're turning things on their head: The state is a result of class antagonisms. Communists do want to overthrow the capitalist state as to undermine the consolidated power of the bourgeoisie (or actually, capital in a more general sense) and replace it with a proletarian "state" which, although only a semi-state at best, is still an expression of the hegemony of the proletariat. The reason for this is simple: Class society will not end overnight, as although the 'big' bourgeoisie might disappear (which is only a very tiny group anyway) as they're expropriated, the 'petit' bourgeoisie and other middle strata (like lawyers, accountants, managers, etc) which control very specific monopolies on knowledge and skills will only be able to be absorbed into the proletariat proper on a part by part basis. The very fact therefore that the proletariat needs to ensure its continued hegemony as a class is by very definition a state-like function.

Class antagonisms will exist for as long as there is a state. By making the proletariat the ruling class, it loses its proletarian nature and divides are created within it. There will be those who stay loyal to the revolution and those who realise that they like being the ruling class and try to create a new hierarchy with themselves at the top. The latter group will drown out the voices of the former and quite possibly form a Stalin-esque dictatorship over the proletariat in which all the oppression still exists, but pretends to exist "for the people." You can't assume that people who were once oppressed will be fair once instated as the ruling class simply because, in a past world, they were oppressed. As for undermining the bourgeoisie, workers' militias are perfectly capable of suppressing counter-revolutions and if they fought for communism in the first place, they will fight to protect it. Although class society won't end overnight, we mustn't preserve it by keeping the state and by doing this make it easier for people who like hierarchy to rise to the top.

[RedMaterialist]

You still believe this utter nonsense? It did not wither away as there was a disempowered, dispossessed working class ruled over by another class. It did not wither away, it disintegrated quickly. This reveals an utter ignorance of 1) the events and chronology of the collapse (not withering) of the USSR and Eastern bloc 2) the nature of a workers' state and what it entails to wither away. It's wrong for so many reasons it's hard to understand why someone -- with emphasis on the 'one' since there is actually only one person who does -- chooses to believe this. Maybe that person likes the notion of having invented an alternative hypothesis for why the USSR is gone now and clings unto it for that sole reason.

Wither away, disintegrated quickly...what is the difference? Sometimes a tree appears to be solid, then it collapses from within.

[RedMaterialist]

It didn't collapse at all. Especially not as communists would have predicted it. The USSR was dismantled from the top by a ruling class which stood to gain from a transition into full blown capitalism and an accompanying decline in workers rights. The referendum on the continuation of the Union that was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping it only shows how divorced from the population the bureaucracy was. Not even the most ardent Stalinists would claim that the Soviet Union collapsed into full blown communism, especially not after Khrushchev and the rest assassinated him and started de-Stalinization.

1. If there is one thing almost everybody agrees on, it's that the Soviet Union "collapsed" and collapsed suddenly.

2. Dismantled from the top? Why would the ruling class do that if they were already in control of the state and the workers?

3. You can't have a referendum on the existence of a state. It is the materialist development of class domination. Full blown communism was not created because immediately after the collapse world capital poured in and converted most state property into private property. Jeffery Sachs was the agent of the capitalists for this theft.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

It collapsed in the sense that the ideology that had kept it afloat had collapsed and the state had lost any kind of legitimacy in the eyes of the people it ruled. A collapsed state looks like Somalia, the USSR clearly was dismantled in part by its ruling class but also with the help of NATO and the US in particular. If the status quo could have been maintained longer, then it would have been, but the party had run out of time needed to move. A collapse would not have seen the state owned economy quickly and cleanly packaged off for the old party bureaucrats, it would have been chaos in the streets and protracted civil war for years if not decades.

actually fuck this I'm not having this discussion again. You're wrong, everyone agrees that you're wrong, everyone please stop responding to redmaterialist.

[RedMaterialist]

The Russian proletariat were dealt a shit hand by the material conditions of the time. They were never able to consolidate class rules, a dotp. Filling in the void, the Bolsheviks as a party divorced from the class, and not as "the party", took the reigns of a bourgeois state. Born of that was state capitalism.

So, what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union? A capitalist state that powerful should never just have collapsed. The SU survived a civil war fought against the Western Entente, survived mass famine, survived Hitler, became the second largest economy in the world, had one of the highest credit ratings in the world, had very little debt, fought the U.S. to essentially a draw in the cold war, got into space first. Does this sound like a country on the verge of collapse?

It's important to remember the actual state of the Soviet economy in the early 1980's. Most reputable western economists were saying that the Soviet economy was in pretty good shape. See, for instance, Paul Samuelson's analysis of the Soviet economy in the 1980's. (I think it was Samuelson.) Since then, of course, Samuelson has been deleted from history.

[Tim Cornelis]

Wither away, disintegrated quickly...what is the difference? Sometimes a tree appears to be solid, then it collapses from within.

This reinforces what I wrote earlier, you are ignorant of the nature of a workers' state and what it entails to wither away.

Here's what withering away means.

A workers' state forms in a social revolution. This workers' state consists of organs of workers' power; political power is in the hands of the revolutionary working class. Decisions are made below, in lower organs, and then deputies are delegated upward and these decisions are generalised and then imposed on the whole of the revolutionary territory. This workers' state wields coercive power, to generalise the revolutionary gains and to repress the reaction -- as well as out of necessity due to the immature nature of the new organs, but this is secondary. Then, as the workers' state is gradually defeats the reaction and the reaction withers, so does the requirement for coercive power. The existence of the coercive functions of the workers' state becomes obsolete. What remains of the workers' state, the organs of workers' power, is the free association of equal producers and consumers. The free association of equals is the organs within workers' state matured, consolidated, and stripped of coercive functions. Therefore, a requirement for the withering away of the state is the existence of the basis of associations of producers (and consumers).
In the Soviet Union this did not exist. The fundamental basis for the withering away of the state did not exist. The state was top-down, political power was not in the hands of the working class, there was therefore a class society that repressed workers and activities geared toward workers' rights such as strikes. From this alone we know that it was impossible for the Soviet state to wither away, and we saw, beyond a shred of doubt, that it did not happen. You have to ignore every and all events leading up to the disintegration of the Eastern bloc and the USSR to maintain the state withered away. There were protests, strike actions, demonstrations, reforms (perestroika and glasnost). None of this would be seen in a state withering away. And only if you utterly ignorant of what it entails for a state to wither away can you seriously consider your laughable hypothesis.

Let's look at the first Eastern bloc state to "wither away", Poland:


On December 13, 1981, Jaruzelski proclaimed martial law, suspended Solidarity, and temporarily imprisoned most of its leaders. This sudden crackdown on Solidarity was reportedly out of fear of Soviet intervention (see Soviet reaction to the Polish crisis of 1980–1981). The government then banned Solidarity on October 8, 1982. Martial law was formally lifted in July 1983, though many heightened controls on civil liberties and political life, as well as food rationing, remained in place through the mid-to-late-1980s. Jaruzelski stepped down as prime minister in 1985 and became president (chairman of the Council of State).
This did not prevent Solidarity from gaining more support and power. Eventually it eroded the dominance of the PUWP, which in 1981 lost approximately 85,000 of its 3 million members. Throughout the mid-1980s, Solidarity persisted solely as an underground organization, but by the late 1980s was sufficiently strong to frustrate Jaruzelski's attempts at reform, and nationwide strikes in 1988 were one of the factors that forced the government to open a dialogue with Solidarity.
From February 6 to April 15, 1989, talks of 13 working groups in 94 sessions, which became known as the "Roundtable Talks" (Polish: Rozmowy Okrągłego Stołu) saw the PUWP abandon power and radically altered the shape of the country. The semi-free June elections brought a victory for the Solidarity movement that took all contested (35%) seats in the Sejm, the Parliament's lower house, and all but one seat in the fully free elected Senat.
The Communists' longtime satellite parties, the United People's Party and Democratic Party, broke their alliance with the Communists and threw their support to Solidarity. Left with no other choice, Jaruzelski, who had been named president in July, appointed a Solidarity-led coalition government with Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the country's first non-Communist prime minister since 1948.
On December 29 the Parliament amended the Constitution to formally restore democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. This began the Third Polish Republic and effectively ended the Communist Party's hold on the government. PZPR was finally disbanded on January 30, 1990, even if Wałęsa could be elected as President only eleven months after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People's_Republic#Late_years

Does this sound like a state that withers away because of the absence of class antagonisms? A state that represses a mass trade union that uses strike action to defend and expand workers' rights? A state that declares martial law? A state that withers away by finally conceding to this trade union and then holding liberal-democratic elections?

Is that really what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away? Use your fucking head.


So, what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union? A capitalist state that powerful should never just have collapsed. The SU survived a civil war fought against the Western Entente, survived mass famine, survived Hitler, became the second largest economy in the world, had one of the highest credit ratings in the world, had very little debt, fought the U.S. to essentially a draw in the cold war, got into space first. Does this sound like a country on the verge of collapse?

It's important to remember the actual state of the Soviet economy in the early 1980's. Most reputable western economists were saying that the Soviet economy was in pretty good shape. See, for instance, Paul Samuelson's analysis of the Soviet economy in the 1980's. (I think it was Samuelson.) Since then, of course, Samuelson has been deleted from history.

Here's my explanation:

Trade unions in the USSR were functionaries of management, seeking to promote and enhance labour productivity at the expense of the workers' well-being.

"Workers' living standards declined sharply from 1928 to 1933 by at least half, to a bare subsistence level. Part of this was the disastrous outcome of agricultural Collectivization, but part of it was deliberate policy: to finance the forced industrialization of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) by squeezing the workers with simultaneous pay-cuts and production speed-ups. After 1933, living standards began to recover, but only precariously. For example, by 1937, wages had climbed back to 60% of the 1928 level. Nearly all investment was directed to heavy industry and weapons, rather than consumer goods for working families. Despite a shortage of workers for new industrial projects, fierce repression of independent union activity ensured that wages would remain low."
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html

This doesn't sound like any policy designed by working people, it sounds exactly like policy designed by a ruling class seeking capital accumulation (or economic growth) at the expense of the working class). It is delusional to think that any sort of workers' democracy existed, or that a workers' democracy would choose to increase the rate of exploitation immensely. And trade unions, as functionaries of the Soviet ruling class, facilitated this increased rate of exploitation through various means.

As Marxists, we should argue that the reforms in the Soviet Union were in response to the material conditions, the economic base, and economic stagnation. There was a constant downward trend in the growth rates of the USSR from 1937 onwards. The growth rate and reproduction of the Soviet economy was sustained by the “massive quantitative mobilization of productive resources” (p. 68, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience) as well as the large volume of available labour-power. The rate of growth for constant capital was many fold that of the growth of living labour, “there was no corresponding growth in the productivity of social labour.” (p. 77, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). In other words, the source for economic growth (or capital accumulation) in the USSR was its massive resources of labour and raw materials, yet there was stunted growth of labour productivity and stunted growth of technical improvements of the methods of production. That the methods of production, fixed capital, were notoriously and comparatively outdated and old can be seen as an affirmation or indication of the crisis of absolute over-accumulation of capital in the Soviet Union. Invention, innovation, diffusion, and incremental improvements were falling or consistently low (p. 73, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). Gorbachev noted that “the structure of our production remained unchanged and no longer corresponded to the exigencies of scientific and technological progress.” (p.74, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). The reason for this was that the implementation of new innovative technology in production disrupted the production process temporarily and managers obstructed this, as it threatened reaching their production quotas, with no additional future rewards as prospect.

The economic stagnation and eventual economic decline can thus be seen as the crisis of absolute over-accumulation. In an effort to correct this, the management of capital had to re-invent itself. The various reforms implemented under the rule of subsequent Soviet leaders, particularly the Liberman reforms and the reforms of the Gorbachev era, (market-oriented reforms) were intended to make capital's management more efficient.

In other words, the collapse of the USSR was due to reforms geared toward ensuring the stagnating economy would no longer stagnate by introducing market-oriented reforms which eventually lead to opening up society to liberal-democratic demands.

[RedMaterialist]

The Russian proletariat were dealt a shit hand by the material conditions of the time. They were never able to consolidate class rules, a dotp. Filling in the void, the Bolsheviks as a party divorced from the class, and not as "the party", took the reigns of a bourgeois state. Born of that was state capitalism.

So, what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union? A capitalist state that powerful should never just have collapsed. The SU survived a civil war fought against the Western Entente, survived mass famine, survived Hitler, became the second largest economy in the world, had one of the highest credit ratings in the world, had very little debt, fought the U.S. to essentially a draw in the cold war, got into space first. Does this sound like a country on the verge of collapse?

It's important to remember the actual state of the Soviet economy in the early 1980's. Most reputable western economists were saying that the Soviet economy was in pretty good shape. See, for instance, Paul Samuelson's analysis of the Soviet economy in the 1980's. (I think it was Samuelson.) Since then, of course, Samuelson has been deleted from history.

[RedMaterialist]

Is that really what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away? Use your fucking head.

Why not just make an argument without the annoying profanities?

[exeexe]

I think the reason why USSR collapsed is because deep down inside the USSR leaders knew how terrible USSR was. USSR lost in the space race, lost in the arm race. Couldn't afford to maintain their nuclear facilities and then people rebelled. The invasion of Afghanistan lead to nowhere. It was clear that it couldn't be hidden anymore. The leaders could not hide how terrible USSR was. So USSR didn't collapsed because of war or productivity or economy but on ideology. The terrible ideology that was inherited in USSR caught up with reality, and if there was something USSR couldn't escape from then it was its own ideology.

There simply was no reason to continue it anymore. It was a dead end.

[Brutus]

So, from 'revolution to counterrevolution' is a spectrum of developments, with the counterrevolutionary developments starting in early 1918 when the Bolsheviks annuled soviet elections or completely dissolved them where they couldn't get a majority...

Yes, the soviets were organs of proletarian power, but soviets are not in themselves organs of revolutionary struggle. They become revolutionary when the Communist Party (i.e. the party of the class conscious proletariat) wins a majority within them. In some cases, the Bolshevik delegates were beaten in an election, stood down, and were promptly shot by Entente soldiers who were invited in by the newly elected Mensheviks. The annulment of soviet elections can't be called counter-revolutionary if the delegates elected held views contrary to proletarian class interests. The fetishisation of councils by some communists (and this isn't aimed at you Q, I know you're not one of them) is absolutely ridiculous. To raise democracy to a principle is foolish- as Communists we fight for the interests of the working class, whether the majority agree with it or not.

[exeexe]

To raise democracy to a principle is foolish- as Communists we fight for the interests of the working class, whether the majority agree with it or not.
So you are a menshevik?

[Brutus]

So you are a menshevik?

Where the fuck did you get that idea from?

[exeexe]

Where the fuck did you get that idea from?

they took for themselves the name Bolshevik, meaning ‘Those of the Majority. Their opponents, the faction led by Martov, thus became known as Mensheviks, ‘those of the Minority’, despite being the overall larger faction
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/russiaandukraine/a/Who-Were-The-Mensheviks-And-Bolsheviks.htm

[Brutus]

http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/russiaandukraine/a/Who-Were-The-Mensheviks-And-Bolsheviks.htm

Apart from that relates to a dispute on the conditions for party membership, and has absolutely no relevance to what I am saying in that post.

[exeexe]

Aah ok i think i understand it now. Minority of the party and not a minority of the national election :)

[Tim Cornelis]

Why not just make an argument without the annoying profanities?

Why not use an argument without the annoying stupidity. ZING


Yes, the soviets were organs of proletarian power, but soviets are not in themselves organs of revolutionary struggle. They become revolutionary when the Communist Party (i.e. the party of the class conscious proletariat) wins a majority within them. In some cases, the Bolshevik delegates were beaten in an election, stood down, and were promptly shot by Entente soldiers who were invited in by the newly elected Mensheviks. The annulment of soviet elections can't be called counter-revolutionary if the delegates elected held views contrary to proletarian class interests. The fetishisation of councils by some communists (and this isn't aimed at you Q, I know you're not one of them) is absolutely ridiculous. To raise democracy to a principle is foolish- as Communists we fight for the interests of the working class, whether the majority agree with it or not.

The task is to win a majority in them, not abolish them if we cannot. Otherwise it defeats the purpose.

[Five Year Plan]

Yes, the Russian revolution was obviously genuinely proletarian in nature. It was also however very limited from the outset. Besides the problems I pointed to in my previous post, there was also the limitation that the workers council model couldn't take over the running of society as an alternative state, which was the hope of the Bolsheviks to resolve the 'authority problem (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6618)'. It wasn't a solution and therefore the Bolsheviks had to step in almost immediately and merge state functions into them. This then had the toll of a political degeneration as conditions worsened and the Bolsheviks had to enforce their rule in increasingly worse ways as time went on under the conditions I pointed to in my previous post.

So, from 'revolution to counterrevolution' is a spectrum of developments, with the counterrevolutionary developments starting in early 1918 when the Bolsheviks annuled soviet elections or completely dissolved them where they couldn't get a majority (which was in many places) up to the 'Stalin constitution' of 1936 which consolidated the facts on the ground or maybe even stronger expressed in the mass executions of the old generation of Bolsheviks around the same time.

Whether or not capitalism took over from that point, as RedMaterialist contends, is another discussion. I don't think it did until the law of value could properly work again in the 1990's. In my opinion there is no need to position this as an 'either-or' (as if it could have either been socialism or been capitalism). In fact, I think this is a fallacy (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=18835).

I appreciate your response, Q, and it clarifies a lot of questions I had about your understanding of how things went wrong politically. But I can't seem to find anywhere in your post where you state clearly whether you think that the state the Bolsheviks led in the early years after October was a workers' state or a bourgeois state, and, if the latter, when that workers' state was smashed through counter-revolution. Do you not have views on these issues?

[Tim Cornelis]

I think the reason why USSR collapsed is because deep down inside the USSR leaders knew how terrible USSR was. USSR lost in the space race, lost in the arm race. Couldn't afford to maintain their nuclear facilities and then people rebelled. The invasion of Afghanistan lead to nowhere. It was clear that it couldn't be hidden anymore. The leaders could not hide how terrible USSR was. So USSR didn't collapsed because of war or productivity or economy but on ideology. The terrible ideology that was inherited in USSR caught up with reality, and if there was something USSR couldn't escape from then it was its own ideology.

There simply was no reason to continue it anymore. It was a dead end.

That assumes a lot of altruism and benevolence on the part of the Soviet ruling political elite. It sounds very implausible.


Why not just make an argument without the annoying profanities?

But seriously, answer the question. It's very convenient for you to focus on that 'profanity'. The ruling political elite conceding to an independent mass trade union and holding liberal-democratic elections is what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away?

[Q]

I appreciate your response, Q, and it clarifies a lot of questions I had about your understanding of how things went wrong politically. But I can't seem to find anywhere in your post where you state clearly whether you think that the state the Bolsheviks led in the early years after October was a workers' state or a bourgeois state, and, if the latter, when that workers' state was smashed through counter-revolution. Do you not have views on these issues?
It was a mix. The soviet form was a clear attempt to establish a workers' state, which failed. Under the pressure of the civil war, one man management was introduced and many people of the old bureaucratic tsarist apparatus were put back to work. Many institutions of the old tsarist state were recreated. Then again, the tsarist state itself wasn't fully 'bourgeois', it still had lots of feudal leftovers. This then begs the question of what makes a state 'bourgeois' in the first place?

Anyway, by recreating many of the old institutions and thereby reintroducing top-down rule, it became a concrete expression of the counterrevolution, be it under a 'red banner'.

[Five Year Plan]

It was a mix. The soviet form was a clear attempt to establish a workers' state, which failed. Under the pressure of the civil war, one man management was introduced and many people of the old bureaucratic tsarist apparatus were put back to work. Many institutions of the old tsarist state were recreated. Then again, the tsarist state itself wasn't fully 'bourgeois', it still had lots of feudal leftovers. This then begs the question of what makes a state 'bourgeois' in the first place?

Anyway, by recreating many of the old institutions and thereby reintroducing top-down rule, it became a concrete expression of the counterrevolution, be it under a 'red banner'.

I don't understand what you mean by saying the state was a "mix." Are you suggesting it was half bourgeois state and half workers' state? The Marxist understanding of the tsarist state was that it was a feudal state presided over by an absolutist regime that harnessed power away from the landed aristocracy on the basis of incipient capitalist development.

[Q]

I don't understand what you mean by saying the state was a "mix." Are you suggesting it was half bourgeois state and half workers' state?
I explained in the rest of the paragraph what I mean by it.

[Five Year Plan]

I explained in the rest of the paragraph what I mean by it.

You seem to be confusing a type of state with the modes of production that operate in the society controlled by that state. So in Russia in 1910, you had a society predominantly feudal but also capitalist, so the state in your view, was a little bit of both. I have rarely seen Marxists speak this way.

[RedMaterialist]

But seriously, answer the question. It's very convenient for you to focus on that 'profanity'. The ruling political elite conceding to an independent mass trade union and holding liberal-democratic elections is what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away?

Gorbachev conceded to a trade union? When did that happen?

The ruling military attempted a coup against Gorbachev and Yeltsin in August 1991. That coup failed because by that time the Soviet State was essentially an empty shell. Gorbachev resigned, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and power was handed over to the drunk Yeltsin.

I don't pretend that anyone agrees with my theory. Or that it is plausible. I do think it is an attempt to explain the collapse of the SU in class terms and particularly in terms of the class structure of the state.

The other explanations are simply not believable or not supported by any evidence:
1. Ronald Reagan ordered Gorbachev to tear down the wall and Gorbachev, terrified, complied.
2. The economy of the SU disintegrated because of military spending forced on the SU by Reagan's cold war build up. No evidence whatsoever.
3. The socialist command economy finally fell apart. No evidence.
4. The Soviet bureaucracy finally became unbearable to the working class which rose up and smashed it. There wasn't much smashing. The whole thing collapsed.

Why in all of history has there never been anything even remotely similar to what happened in the Soviet Union? A massive world superpower simply collapsed. It's as if Hitler decided one day in 1943 to just call it quits and retire to Argentina.

[Tim Cornelis]

Gorbachev conceded to a trade union? When did that happen?

Hey smart ass, I asked about Poland.

"Let's look at the first Eastern bloc state to "wither away", Poland: Does this sound like a state that withers away because of the absence of class antagonisms? A state that represses a mass trade union that uses strike action to defend and expand workers' rights? A state that declares martial law? A state that withers away by finally conceding to this trade union and then holding liberal-democratic elections?"

That you try your very best to not answer this question by changing the topic reveals to me that you don't have an answer.


The ruling military attempted a coup against Gorbachev and Yeltsin in August 1991. That coup failed because by that time the Soviet State was essentially an empty shell. Gorbachev resigned, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and power was handed over to the drunk Yeltsin.

I don't pretend that anyone agrees with my theory. Or that it is plausible. I do think it is an attempt to explain the collapse of the SU in class terms and particularly in terms of the class structure of the state.

It is a rather terrible attempt to be honest.


The other explanations are simply not believable or not supported by any evidence:
1. Ronald Reagan ordered Gorbachev to tear down the wall and Gorbachev, terrified, complied.

No one says this. This is, presumably, a strawman argument of:


2. The economy of the SU disintegrated because of military spending forced on the SU by Reagan's cold war build up. No evidence whatsoever.

Well I'm not entirely familiar with all the evidence, but that the military ate up 20% of GDP or government spending (not sure), I suppose a reasonable argument can be construed around it.


3. The socialist command economy finally fell apart. No evidence.

That's because no one phrases it like that.


4. The Soviet bureaucracy finally became unbearable to the working class which rose up and smashed it. There wasn't much smashing. The whole thing collapsed.

No one says that. Not that I'm aware of.

And where is the theory supposed by empirical evidence which I provided? That the economy begin its gradual decline already in the late 1930s, eventually stagnating in the 1960s, and declining in the late 1980s, that this was due to the absolute over-accumulation of capital, and that subsequent Soviet leaderships sought to remedy this decline by implementing market-reforms which ultimately resulted in the perestroika and glasnost; which, on their turn, caused for the Eastern bloc and Soviet Union to finally crumble.


Why in all of history has there never been anything even remotely similar to what happened in the Soviet Union? A massive world superpower simply collapsed. It's as if Hitler decided one day in 1943 to just call it quits and retire to Argentina.

It's not like that at all. IF you want to draw an analogy with world war II, Japan is your candidate. Imperial Japan, a world super power, that just collapsed in a matter of a day, sort of. How? Why? How could an empire like that just collapse? Well, with Japan it's obvious it was the nuclear bombs and US military advances. With the USSR it was more hidden, but the structural ineffectiveness of its economic system proved incurable within its own scope.

Anyway, just because the collapse of the Soviet empire is unique does not in any way lend credibility to your hypothesis. The theory I explained here is perfectly capable of explaining why, supposedly, nothing similar has ever happened.

The collapse of the Mayan state was unique -- which was also a superpower of sorts that 'just' collapsed. That doesn't mean anything (in and of itself).

"The fall of the Maya is one of history’s great mysteries. One of the mightiest civilizations in the ancient Americas simply fell into ruin in a very short time. Mighty cities like Tikal were abandoned and Maya stonemasons stopped making temples and stelae. The dates are not in doubt: deciphered glyphs at several sites indicate a thriving culture in the ninth century A.D., but the record goes eerily silent after the last recorded date on a Maya stela, 904 A.D. There are many theories as to what happened to the Maya, but little consensus among experts."

http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Maya/p/What-Happened-To-The-Ancient-Maya.htm

The Mongol Empire also collapsed in a matter of years.

When the Chinese 'communist party' loses control of China and Tibet and Xinjiang secede, will you also claim that the state withered away? Because that would be quite similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[RedMaterialist]

The Mongol Empire also collapsed in a matter of years.

When the Chinese 'communist party' loses control of China and Tibet and Xinjiang secede, will you also claim that the state withered away? Because that would be quite similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Tikals were conquered by the Maya, the Maya by the Spanish, and the Mongols by the Ming Chinese.

Poland was essentially a state of the Soviet Union. It should have been a forewarning when Poland elected Walensa (sp?) that the Soviets didn't do anything. They had before in Czechoslovkia and Hungary. Already the state was withering.

The Chinese state will collapse the same way if the capitalist class is eliminated. If the Chinese let Tibet go the way the Soviets let Poland go, then I would say it is happening again.

The Cuban state will be the next to collapse. And when it does, capital from the US will flood in creating a new quasi-Russian, neo-capitalist state.

[consuming negativity]

There is no way this isn't trolling.

[exeexe]

That assumes a lot of altruism and benevolence on the part of the Soviet ruling political elite. It sounds very implausible.

Altruism and benevolence are not even needed. Just a sober observing of facts and an acceptance to the demands created by necessaries (In other words the law of nature).

[tuwix]

Poland was essentially a state of the Soviet Union. It should have been a forewarning when Poland elected Walensa (sp?) that the Soviets didn't do anything. They had before in Czechoslovkia and Hungary. Already the state was withering.

It's just obvious that you discuss about things that you has absolutely no idea.

Wałęsa was elected a year after Hungary and Czechoslovakia have elected parliaments in Western style. And all of this happened with permission of the Soviet Union. It was their strategy to make European satellites a neutral zone and demand from them to pay for oil and gas in very hard currency. The strategy goal was to cure the soviet economy. But Soviet state always had poor knowledge about economy and this is why strategy failed as the whole state.

Yes, Poland were the Soviet Union colony, but now we are neo-colony of foreign capital. And there is no difference.

[Tim Cornelis]

The Tikals were conquered by the Maya, the Maya by the Spanish, and the Mongols by the Ming Chinese.

Nope. The Mayan empire collapsed hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived. The Mongolian Empire collapsed by splitting up into rival territories.


Poland was essentially a state of the Soviet Union. It should have been a forewarning when Poland elected Walensa (sp?) that the Soviets didn't do anything. They had before in Czechoslovkia and Hungary. Already the state was withering.

You're no answering my question.


The Chinese state will collapse the same way if the capitalist class is eliminated. If the Chinese let Tibet go the way the Soviets let Poland go, then I would say it is happening again.

You're hopeless.


The Cuban state will be the next to collapse. And when it does, capital from the US will flood in creating a new quasi-Russian, neo-capitalist state.

This cannot be reconciled with the facts. The Cuban state is actively liberalising its economy. It's not withering away and private capital flooding the country as a consequence -- it's liberalising. My god.

I'm sorry but this is so unbelievably stupid. I already tackled the ridiculous notion that the state withered away, but here another argument. You act as if the state withering away is some compelling mystical force. Why would it wither away? Why would the workers in Cuba accept private capital entering the country all of a sudden when the state has withered away? They wouldn't accept, if we accept the notion that the state is withering away, that private capital comes in, subdues the population, steals all social property, etc. It would lead to open violent confrontation.... AND thus the workers' state would still exist as one part of the violent confrontation! The state does not wither away because it withers away, it withers away because it there are no class antagonisms. Cuban would have that because of the threat of private capital. So even in this regard your hypothesis is beyond stupid.

Just accept the facts for crying out loud.

[bropasaran]

To those talking about how the Civil war was responsible for authoritarianism, or how it was actually Stalin's idea, sorry, but you're wrong.

"I consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner, and much less painfully."
Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, 1920.

.

Also, I find it interesting when Marxists criticise the Soviet union, being that there is no Marxist basis to do that on, one has to appeal to libertarianism (anarchist principles) to be against it.

According to Marxist notions, under Lenin's and Trotsky's "war communism", and later under Stalin, USSR abolished private property, there was no "bourgeoise", meaning it was, according to Marxism, a classless society. It's only faults were that in used money and that it wasn't global. I've actually seen people claim this- USSR wasn't socialism because it used money and wasn't global. In fact, being that there wasn't any "bourgoise", and that it was a classless society, it means that it fact there was no state there- because a state is, according to Marxism, just an instrument of class rule, and being that there weren't classes, there couldn't have been any state there. Stalin established a classless and a stateless society, yep. Imagine global Stalinism that uses calculation in natura instead of money and voila- full communism.

[Wuggums47]

I feel that a communist state is meant to be ruled by the people, not a single ruler, and that's where the Soviet Union went wrong.

[motion denied]

So in this thread we have two people saying that, "according to Marxism", the USSR was a classless society.

Is this real life?

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail? Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail? How can we prevent this happening again?

Because the humanzee experiments weren't properly funded and later disbanded. Stalin's greatest tactical failure really. Total death nail for the fSU.

[exeexe]

So in this thread we have two people saying that, "according to Marxism", the USSR was a classless society.

Is this real life?
In Soviet Russia the classless society takes advantage of you

[Old Bolshie]

Yes, the soviets were organs of proletarian power, but soviets are not in themselves organs of revolutionary struggle. They become revolutionary when the Communist Party (i.e. the party of the class conscious proletariat) wins a majority within them.

But who were the communists then? Only the Bolsheviks?


In some cases, the Bolshevik delegates were beaten in an election, stood down, and were promptly shot by Entente soldiers who were invited in by the newly elected Mensheviks. The annulment of soviet elections can't be called counter-revolutionary if the delegates elected held views contrary to proletarian class interests.

And who determined the proletarian class interests? The Bolsheviks?


The fetishisation of councils by some communists (and this isn't aimed at you Q, I know you're not one of them) is absolutely ridiculous. To raise democracy to a principle is foolish- as Communists we fight for the interests of the working class, whether the majority agree with it or not.

But then you deny one fundamental marxist point which is that the proletarian class conquers the political power when it forms the majority of the population and not before.

[RedMaterialist]

Nope. The Mayan empire collapsed hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived. The Mongolian Empire collapsed by splitting up into rival territories.

Check your history

This cannot be reconciled with the facts. The Cuban state is actively liberalising its economy. It's not withering away and private capital flooding the country as a consequence -- it's liberalising. My god.

You act as if the state withering away is some compelling mystical force. Why would it wither away?[/QUOTE]


It withers away for the reason that Marx and Engels said. After the capitaist classes (including the petit bourgeois) are destroyed then there will be no basis/reason/structure for the continued existence of the state. There wont be any class to be suppressed or to suppress. No class structure no state.


Why would the workers in Cuba accept private capital entering the country all of a sudden when the state has withered away? They wouldn't accept, if we accept the notion that the state is withering away,

The russians opened the gates to the city to western capital. why do you think cuba will be any difference?